16th EUSPR Conference and Members’ Meeting

Why you want to meet your future self: Stimulating future orientation in a smartphone- and VR-based intervention

25 Sept 2025, 11:00

15m

Innere Medizin/2-404 (Virchowweg 9)

Oral presentation Digital Interventions in Prevention Early Career session 1

Speaker

Esther Mertens (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law; Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement)

Description

Authors: Esther Mertens (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law; Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement), Tiffany Tettero (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law; Leiden University), Aniek Siezenga (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law; Leiden University), Jean-Louis van Gelder (Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law; Leiden University)

Introduction: Future orientation appears to be an important underlying factor for various positive and negative behaviors. Generally, future-oriented behavior fosters positive outcomes, such as goal achievement, a sense of competence and financial savings, while shortsighted behavior is associated with negative outcomes, such as delinquency, unhealthy lifestyle and substance abuse. Therefore, we developed an intervention, FutureU, that aims to enhance future orientation. To this end, people interact with their 10-year older self, i.e., their future self, via the FutureU smartphone application (app) or Virtual Reality (VR).
Methods: We conducted a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) among first-year university students (N = 321) including three conditions: 1) FutureU app, 2) FutureU VR, and 3) a goal-setting control condition. Students completed questionnaires at baseline, during the intervention, and immediately after the intervention.
Results: Preliminary results showed that changes in vividness of the future self were related to concurrent changes in future orientation. However, changes in relatedness with and valence towards the future self were unrelated to concurrent changes in future orientation. When testing the working mechanism of FutureU, the results indicated that FutureU increased vividness of the future self, which, in turn, stimulated future orientation.
Conclusions: The preliminary results suggest that in particular vividness of the future self functions as a working mechanism for increasing future orientation. During my presentation, I will elaborate on the theoretical foundation of the FutureU intervention, discuss the implications of our findings for intervention theory, and touch upon the next steps we are planning to take to further improve FutureU.